Wk 9 - day 39

the activity today was about viruses. i find it funny, not really, that after i started teaching about viruses that i came down with one. i can thank mrs. s for that one! i knew i was getting sick on friday...i could feel it. by friday night i had a fever of 101.7 and my voice was gone. the really nasty thing was that i knew it was in my chest. ever since taipei...if i get the slightest sniffle...it goes into my chest. i was diagnosed with chronic obstructive bronchitis in taipei and now whenever i get a "cold", i get bronchitis with a snap of my fingers. i feel better today than i did over the weekend, but i can't sleep...sinus pressure, chest congestion, blah, blah, blah. let me tell you, it's hard to be chipper with the students when you feel like curling up under the blankets in the fetal position and sleeping for a week. i love my students though...so it's hard not to smile.

i had the students divided up into the four corners of the room and used a roll of string as my vector. the students were either mosquitos or people. if they caught the ball of string and was a mosquito, they "bit" the person next to them. if they were a person...nothing happened. i tossed a coin to see if the vector stayed in the same city or moved on to a different one. i had a worksheet for the students to fill out after we were done with this activity. the last 10 minutes, they needed to pick a partner and a virus to research. we're spending tomorrow researching on the computer and then on wednesday, their presenting their findings to the class.

i thought the activity went well...not like the "infected" one, but well enough that i'd do it again. the only thing that i would've done differently is to issue some demerits for students failing to stay on task. mrs. s stated that she wouldn't have put up with the noise especially after i asked them to keep the noise level down because of my voice/breathing issues. i do have to crack the whip a tad more in 8th period, but nothing really severe. the other thing i introduced today was the take home quiz. the students have to create their own virus. there were a lot of groans, but after we talked about a few movies dealing with viruses and how creative they could be...students seemed very interested. i'm anxious to see what kind of viruses i'll be reading about next week!